Inspired by Jean Genet, this enigmatic movie is a trilogy, interweaving three apparently unconnected stories. The first story is "Homo", clearly derived from Genet, about imprisoned thief John Broom (Scott Renderer) who finds himself attracted to another prisoner whom he had known and seen humiliated as a youth at Baton juvenile reform school. He forces the man into an emotional relationship and later rapes him. The present sequences are shot in murky half-light, and the prison seems like a labyrinth of potential destruction. Broom's life in prison is shown, as well as the sex and love between men there, with flashbacks to his life as a boy in the reformatory. We get a glimpse of adolescent boys and their discovery of sexuality and the hierarchies of the "counterfeit world of men among men". It seems like one is coming in and out of a dream in Fontenal Prison.
Next is "Horror", in black and white, and told in the style of 1950s drive-in sci-fi movies. It references the cinematic styles of directors William Castle and Roger Corman, and it frequently borrows ideas from Rod Serling's TV series "The Twilight Zone". It's about scientist Dr. Graves (Larry Maxwell) who isolates the "elixir of human sexuality" and after drinking it is transformed into a hideous, lethally infectious, murdering mutant monster. Because his physical contacts with others spread the condition in this gay movie, it is clearly about the AIDS epidemic.
The last is "Hero", filmed in the style of a TV documentary on suburban life, and is told through a series of interviews. It's about 7 year-old Richie Beacon. His mother Felicia (Edith Meeks), schoolmates, and neighbours relate how he killed his father, then miraculously disappeared. His mother claims Richie leapt from the window sill and just "flew away... out the window". Neighbors say the boy exposed himself, school teachers say the boy was unnatural, the boy was normal, the boy was creative, the boy was a liar. A doctor thinks it is possible Richie had a disease of the genitals. As the story progresses, the layers add up, but it leaves us without answers. Perhaps the story is about how creepy suburban America really is.
"Poison" was an obscure arthouse film until Senator Jessie Helms, a homophobe, objected to the fact that it had been financed in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Helm's tirade had the effect of arousing public curiosity, and since there's no such thing as bad publicity, it won the Grand Jury Prize at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival and received a quick release to the home video market. The movie specifically references three of Jean Genet's most famous works: "Our Lady of the Flowers", "The Miracle of the Rose", and "The Thief's Journal", all of which were to some extent autobiographical. "Poison" is for the philosophically inclined, is sometimes disturbing, and touches on the maddening effects of suburbia, modern life, civilization, and the human condition. James Bennett composed the incidental music. Todd Haynes wrote the screenplay (derived from Jean Genet) and directed.
